A Tree

I talked to a tree just the other day, I was walking past and it did say

Well, what are you?

Just a traveler.

But what are you?

Why, a human of course, you didn’t know?

I’ve never seen one before.

Well, really? There are eight billion to see.

There are three trillion trees but you’ve never seen me.

Well, you’re just a tree.

I give the oxygen you breathe.

Well, humans made keys and doors and locks, airplanes and boats as well as socks.

What goods a door, it keeps others out, and you have to knock.

It’s safer that way, said I.

I’d rather be free, said the tree. I like my arms reaching up and my roots in the ground, not to be chopped through and through with an axe.
With an axe for the wood for your doors and your locks, for your boats and your planes and even your socks.

I’ve never thought that before, I said, sitting.

Do you know of the clock?

The clock?

It’s ticking, ticking, ticking, as you chop and chop and chop,

Whatever do you mean?

I mean the earth that you so love and waste is crumbling because of your haste, to take and take and take and take to make and make and make and make. You drain the lakes, the ponds, the streams, and our earth is tearing at the seams.

As I walked home I thought and thought. I realized the resources that we so sought were running low, and it seems time to sew our earth back up.